CNN
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One Tuesday afternoon in 2017, the telephone rang at my desk in CNN Middle. On the road was a girl who advised me, “James Brown didn’t die the way in which they mentioned he died. And I’ve proof of it.” The caller’s title was Jacque Hollander. She was a singer for the Carson & Barnes Circus.
The circus singer made one wild declare after one other. I took a couple of notes and politely ended the decision. Even when she was telling the reality, I couldn’t think about how she would show it. James Brown, one of many biggest entertainers in American historical past, died at a hospital in Atlanta in 2006, formally of pure causes. I had no purpose to suspect foul play.
However the circus singer saved calling. She saved saying Brown had been murdered. She saved telling me she had proof to again up all her claims. Lastly, my editor mentioned I would as properly go see what this lady was speaking about.
And so, on a sizzling day in late spring, I took a visit to the circus.
The story turned out to be even deeper and stranger than it appeared. 5 years later, I’m nonetheless untangling all of the threads. Even after my investigative sequence was revealed in 2019, I knew there was extra work to do. I found that James Brown’s life was extra mysterious than his loss of life: layered with deception and intrigue, haunted by the federal government brokers he believed have been following him. After he prevented a riot in Boston in 1968, Brown was satisfied he’d drawn the eye of the FBI and the CIA.
Since taking that unusual telephone name in 2017, I’ve interviewed greater than 200 folks—together with the physician who signed Brown’s loss of life certificates and a good friend who claimed to have taken a vial of Brown’s blood within the hope it might show Brown was murdered. I’ve gathered information from at the very least 14 courthouses. I’ve downloaded textual content messages from the circus singer’s iPhone. I’ve despatched a black stiletto shoe to a lab for forensic evaluation.
I’ve puzzled over the long-lost pages of a deceased informant’s pocket book that may reveal whether or not James Brown’s third spouse, Adrienne, was murdered — and, in that case, who killed her.
In 2021, CNN sued the CIA underneath the Freedom of Data Act to demand the discharge of confidential paperwork that would rewrite the historical past of the Godfather of Soul. The case is pending. To this present day, the CIA won’t affirm or deny these paperwork exist.
What occurred after the circus singer’s telephone name is a narrative that unfolds over eight episodes in “The James Brown Thriller,” a brand new investigative podcast from CNN. It’s a narrative about secrets and techniques, surveillance, and suspicious deaths. It’s in regards to the worry that Brown lived with till the day he died.
And it’s about one lady’s quest to resolve the thriller of the person who ruined her life.
That quest continues, almost 16 years after Brown’s loss of life. Jacque Hollander is 67 now, recovering from coronary heart surgical procedure and residing with a pacemaker. However the different day on the telephone, she advised me she hasn’t given up. She’s nonetheless satisfied that somebody murdered James Brown, and that somebody murdered Adrienne Brown, and that the killers needs to be prosecuted.
“Am I gonna give up? No,” she mentioned. “I can’t simply stroll away from one thing I do know is the reality.”